An End to my Dreams.......????????

It's the weirdest thing, but lately, my weird and wonderful dreams just seem to have all of a sudden... stopped.

And even odder, it's all since I started a completely new blog on the entirely unrelated real-life subject of the Prague dining scene ('knedliky' is Czech for dumplings, which when served up with pork and cabbage constitute the Czech equivalent to British fish & chips).

Could it be that all that nocturnal craziness was just my frustrated brain's way of telling me that I needed a new creative outlet?

Does all the mental energy that goes into the food blog by day somehow allow my subconscious to be more at rest by night?

Or is it just that, what with all these restaurants to review, I'm not staying in at home anymore drinking wine and eating cheese-laden pasta at 9 or 10 at night...?? ;-))

In some ways I'm sorry, but in others its admittedly a relief to have a subconscious (for now at least) at rest for a little while - it is actually quite exhausting to experience life as actively in your sleeping hours as you do when you're awake!

Am sure this won't be the last entry of my dream blog, and I will of course still write up if anything of particular nocturnal interest occurs - until then, however, please divert your attentions to 'Knedliky Etc' for the time being instead (though please don't let on it's me ;-)) ) and leave me finally to a good night's sleep!! ;-))

Come Dine with Me - Episode 4

Well, admittedly it's been a while since the last installment of my personal nocturnal 'Come Dine with Me' series, but luckily last night's belated episode more than made it up for it though, as for the first time in subconscious televisual history, 'Come Dine with Me' actually combined with 'The Apprentice' to deliver up the ultimate in competitive dining reality TV...

Basically, in the tried and tested format of 'The Apprentice', the legendary Sir Alan Sugar set two pre-selected teams (one of which included me as a member) a business task to complete in the course of an episode - in this case having each team prepare a four-course meal for a large group from scratch, an endeavor which ranged from the sourcing of quality ingredients at value prices to the choosing of appropriate menu options etc, before as a team collectively preparing, cooking and serving up the food to a ten-strong select panel of Sir Alan's personal business acquaintances. Unfortunately I was not designated Project Manager for this task, however, and ended up having to follow some other cretin's illogical menu choices - namely to serve omelettes as a main course for ten people, but with only me (equipped with just the one pan) appointed to cook them. Inevitably, this ended up with me desperately trying to chop up the fillings and fry the omelettes one by one at the last minute, knowing all the while that this was nothing more than a pointless exercise in sheer and utter futility imposed by some up-their-own-arse, full-of-shit, Donald Trump wannabe, 'Apprentice' contestant, who despite all their business bravado still lacked the basic common sense to know that it would of course take ages between starter and main to get out ten omelettes individually, and that by the time the time the tenth was done, the first eight or nine would already be stone cold...

Inevitably my team ended up losing the task (though not from want of sheer physical effort on my part), but I defended myself eloquently to Sir Alan, Nick and Margaret (a great loss to the real life version of the show, btw) by citing my original menu that had (on film) been blindly overruled by the puffed up Project Manager. In contrast to the PM's haphazard, ill-thought out menu plan, my options relied instead on both fresh, simple ingredients and sensible pre-prepartion: namely an easily pre-prepared, simple roast vegetable soup as a starter, followed by grilled goat's cheese salad on toasted ciabatta as a quick and easy second course, with a butternut squash and pancetta risotto (simple to prepare in bulk while the first two courses were being served) next as the main, before finally rounding off with a decadent chocolate cheesecake (again easily pre-prepared earlier in the afternoon) for dessert.

So that's one episode survived despite being on the losing room - just hope I survive the Boardroom in the next round!!!!!!!! Until then, Sir Alan Sugar's search for his Apprentice... continues.

Eighties Nostalgia...

Does anyone apart from me remember an eighties kids film called ‘D.A.R.Y.L.’ (short for ‘Data-Analysing Robot Youth Lifeform’)??? It starred the kid from ‘Neverending Story’, and was about a boy who thought he’d lost all memory of his previous existence, but later (much to his own surprise, presumably) actually turned out to be a cyborg at the centre of a top-secret government experiment into artificial intelligence and the capacity of machines to experience human emotion, in effect whether it was possible for an artificial android to become a “real boy”. Kind of like Pinocchio, but with robots.

Well, last night I dreamt I was a repeat experiment of the whole D.A.R.Y.L. saga, with myself not remembering anything of any previous existence, and therefore initially behaving in a totally unsocialised manner. However, while the Daryl child of the film betrayed his technological origins via the demonstration of Spock-like logic / mathematical genius / computer game expertise etc, I just basically ran riot, beating up the fellow siblings of my new adoptive family and just generally raising hell, until I eventually became socialized enough to act like a decent human being. Unlike the Daryl of the movie, however, who quickly learned to experience human emotions, I could only ever adapt to human life in an abstract moral sense, as opposed to developing any innate sense of feeling or humanity – in essence just an extreme manifestation of the generally “emotional crippled” (my mother’s words for my genetically repressed lineage) manner in which I currently live out my real-life existence… Not that it is any bad thing to think more with one’s head rather than heart I suppose, but still, it would be nice to at least have the choice…

Anyway moving back to happier territory, weren’t eighties films in general just great? They just don’t make them like the ‘Goonies’, ‘Karate Kid’, ‘Flight of the Navigator’, ‘Short Circuit’, ‘Dark Crystal’, ‘Big’, ‘Gremlins’, ‘Ghostbusters’, ‘Back to the Future’ and of course ‘E.T.’ any more – though watching David Bowie in the ‘Labyrinth’ now as an adult, you quickly realize why your mum was always so uncharacteristically keen to sit down and watch with you… Wonder if the kids who played Atreyu and Bastian Balthazar Bux in the movie have even the remotest idea that the Czech version of the classic ‘Neverending Story’ song still plays in certain renowned Prague nightclubs plays to this day….????? ;-))))))))

Happy Families...

Last night I dreamed again of returning to university for my forgotten final year (in itself another recurrent dream), only to find my beloved Auntie Anne, Uncle Chris and all my step-siblings sitting in the college common room waiting for me, much to my surprise. I was naturally very touched that they'd all unexpectedly come together to pay me a visit, but at the same time was utterly mortified that they'd also apparently all been sitting there waiting for me to turn up the whole day. Promising I'd just dump my suitcase in my nearby student dorm and come right back down to join them, I heading up to my block, only to find out that, after so many years away, I couldn't remember any more where my old room was, and instead wound up getting myself well and truly lost in the Kafkaesque labyrinth of corridors and staircases that even in real life used to make up much of the old-school Cambridge halls of residences. All the time I was of course panicking that my relatives were all still waiting downstairs, and in the end by the time I did eventually make it back down again, only a patient Auntie Anne and Chris were left. But being two of the nicest and kindest people I know, they weren't cross with me at all, and instead took me out for a lovely dinner at some trendy new restaurant where we shared some lovely red wine and I had pork medallions on a bed of potato purée topped with a cranberry jus to eat. So all in all a happy ending to this one I guess! :-))

Snippets III

A few random recollections of recent nocturnal escapades:

• Going for an interview as Fraud Prevention manager at Ernst & Young, only - to my utter mortification - to bump into my current Dutch and Swedish colleagues who were there collaborating with my company on a joint Excel department. Had to beg them both not to tell our boss that I'd been for another interview elsewhere (not, by the way, that I am even thinking about moving at the moment...).
• Taking off from a private airfield in a small plane with my boss and all my colleagues, only to see a rocket launch and explode in mid-air, scattering a load of toxic phishing mails covered with poisonous yellow powder across the surrounding countryside, and having to organise a mass evacuation of the entire area.
• Going on a road trip with my beloved Michael Palin, who was waxing lyrical about his neo-geometric view of town planning and maximum utilisation of space / balance of urban and rural landscapes.
• Reluctantly going on a tacky beach holiday with family and wanting to stay in spa, but being dragged out into the hot sun and sticky sand anyway (both of which I find utterly bothersome - am more the alpine than the seaside type), where I shared the only bit of shade under a palm tree with some fat old German who kept perving me up.
• Relocating to the countryside as Sarah Jessica Parker (as in 'Did You Hear About the Morgans'), where I bailed hay and sat on a cliff ledge with some random old guy rehashing all the failings of our past relations.
• Running my hand over my stomach and trying to work out if it was concave or convex.

Auf der Flucht...

Strangely enough for an unfailingly law-abiding citizen (not out of any sense of innate morality, you understand, but just a base fear of getting caught), every once in a while I dream that I'm on the run from the law - usually due to a false accusation, abuse in the home, or just wanting to escape the demands of a relentlessly competitive society. The odd thing though is that without exception, rather than being panicked or fearful at the prospect of being tracked down and punished by the law, I actually find these dreams strangely liberating and exhilarating instead...

Last night, for example, I dreamt that myself (as a 13 year old) was on the run together with Dewey from 'Malcolm in the Middle', stopping off at a supermarket to shoplift up on provisions. Unfortunately in this case, Dewey's amateur attempts at petty theft got himself caught, with me as his presumed older sister being hauled up in front of the store manager to explain ourselves - in German of all languages. The kindly store manager clearly suspected there was something wrong with the scenario (namely that we might be two kids fending for ourselves etc), but I successfully managed to put her off the scent by (in German) persuading her that it was just a mistake on little Dewey's part, that I was perfectly ready and willing to pay (luckily I had a stash of presumably ill-gotten cash on me), and that we'd been to this particular shop many times before without causing a problem etc etc...

In the end she decided to let it go, however, leaving me and Dewey to run back to the car (once again presumably stolen, given that neither of us were old enough to drive) and take off, with myself being so utterly stressed out by the whole encounter that for once I let Dewey drive (a rare treat for him, especially since he was the one who'd landed us both in the shit in the first place...).

Clearly behind my diligent, academic, corporate exterior, there is an inner rebel just waiting to break out and recklessly abscond from reality to live by a combination of my wits / petty crime etc - until then though it's filling in my Annual Performance Plan this afternoon and back to work on Monday... Ho hum...

Relocation, Relocation, Relocation

In one of my earliest entries on recurrent dreams, I mentioned that I frequently dream of moving into some seemingly fantastic new flat in Prague, only to later regret the rashness of my decision and realize that I had it better back at the old place after all. With half my colleagues simultaneously moving apartments in real life at the moment, however, it’s probably of no surprise really that the theme of domestic relocation has now once again cropped up in my dreams, though last night with a distinct break from the usual course of events so far…

Generally in such dreams, I find myself randomly moving into a new flat that initially catches my interest, only to later realize that my old one was much better / cheaper / closer to work etc, and that in my hurry to relocate I’ve actually forgotten to find someone to take over the old lease… In last night’s version of the dream, however, I actually took the time to stop and think about the advantages and disadvantages of a prospective move to a potential new flat – a genuine dream first in my recollection... On the one hand, the new flat was tantalizingly close to my office (thereby saving me the tedious twice daily commute), was located in the vibrant, upmarket area of Vinohradý (as opposed to my current neighbourhood of down-and-dirty Holešovice), and even included an actual proper double bed (a definite step-up from my distinctly less than comfortable IKEA fold-out sofa-bed now). On the other hand, the kitchette was crap compared to my current set-up, the flat was situated right above a noisy restaurant / bar, and the two current British tenants (one of whom was afflicted with a distinct squint) I later found out were attempting to illegally sublet the flat to me against the wishes of the actual in absentia owner, who in the event turned out to be none other than recent political victor (of sorts), David Cameron. Deciding that I probably didn’t want to get myself embroiled in some drawn-out property dispute with the current British PM (especially when I was 100% banking for him the other week), for the first time in all my multiple relocation dreams, I finally decided I actually had it pretty good already where I lived already (after all, the commute to work only takes a mere twenty minutes door-to-door, and – bar all the junkies / alcoholics who inhabit the park in front of my house - Holešovice isn’t all that much of a shithole really), and so headed back contentedly to my little sofa-bed studio again on the trusty number five tram.

According to the internet, dreams of moving house have the following interpretations:

Dreams about moving house often mean you are moving through differing aspects of your personality. Your personality is seen to be 'where you live' and so to move house speaks of changes in lifestyle relating to personality, thoughts, beliefs. You are evolving - moving into a higher or different area of growth where changes are big and full of meaning.

Houses in dreams often represent parts of your mind or personality. Perhaps your dream simply reflects your awareness of different parts of your personality. Maybe you have been moving from one part of yourself to another, trying out different aspects of yourself. Maybe you are trying to decide who you really are?

If you are moving a house in your dream, it expresses your feeling that you want to be in a new environment or want to change yourself. If you’re moving in to a gorgeous house, it implies that you’ll be able to find a suitable environment for you and that you will have a chance to change and become a new person.

To me it seems pretty obvious really that such relocation dreams are just a reflection of my current, unresolved state of inner conflict between old and new in terms of both geographical location and future professional path, with the fickleness I display towards alternate abodes in such dreams simply a nocturnal expression of the uncertainty I feel towards pretty much everything in my life right about now (Prague? UK? Law? HR? Parisian MBA? etc etc) and the fear of making a rash or wrong decision I later come to regret. That the new flat in question often turns out to be invasively noisy / unexpectedly shared / or initially unbeknownst to me doubling up as a café-bar by night, I can’t help but feel indicates a deep-seated subconscious fear of giving up the privacy of my current little Holešovice bubble and sharing not just my space, but also my emotions and possibly whole bloody rest of my life with (if all goes to current plan) my one-day cohabiting other half - not an easy thing for someone so inherently private and accustomed to one’s own space (read “borderline hermit” / “emotional cripple” – both traits unfortunately genetically inherited) to contemplate really…

All food for thought for the time being maybe, but until then am sticking with good old inertia in the face of indecision (not to mention still potentially impending global economic meltdown), and will simply play it safe and stick with what I know for now!!! Saves on the hassle of moving at any rate ;-)))

Oops, I (Subconsciously) Did It Again...

So, I think it's fair to say that now that spring has sprung at last, I've suddenly been going out a lot more with friends old and new of late (hooray for expats.cz!), and yes, admittedly on one or two of those occasions have ended up imbibing one too many glasses of vino than is probably good for me at any one time... Nevertheless, no matter how many glasses / bottles I’ve inadvertently consumed, without exception on each of these occasions I have somehow still always managed to totter faithfully back home again afterwards to Skype chat with my beloved long-distance boyfriend at the end of the night, with the conversation generally ending up with me drunkenly declaring my love for him repeatedly / increasingly emphatically / oh, let's face it - utterly undignifiedly down the phone, before finally collapsing into an alcohol-induced sleep that would rival the dead (most of the time while still on the line with headphones still on head).

All of which is pretty much a long drawn-out way of illustrating that I am and have always been one of life's old-fashioned, traditional types, who would not lightly cheat on my partner or in any way betray the mutual trust that is so vital in successfully maintaining a long-distance relationship over a two year period – and that’s a given, no matter how much alcohol has been consumed over the course of the evening or whatever alternative aspirations may be harboured on the part of any ephemeral male dining / drinking partner...

Which makes it all the more surprising really that, despite all of the above, I seem to be dreaming of unintended infidelity on my part with increasing frequency these days - not in the sense of actually committing the act in question, you understand, but rather experiencing the horrified realization of what I've done only later, and being instantly consumed by overwhelming guilt and remorse for my unintentional and (in the details) unrecollected lapse. I only bring up the subject now, however, as I had a particularly striking dream in this respect the other night, waking (or so I thought) in a state of unadulterated relief that it had all been a dream and I’d not been unfaithful after all, only then to suddenly scream out at the sight of a recent expats acquaintance emerging from the heap of spare blankets and pillows I keep stored in the corner of my little one-room studio apartment. Only having hazy memories in the dream of how I'd gotten home the night before, I couldn't be sure whether this unexpected visitor had, perhaps, simply escorted me back to the apartment and out of chivalry just stopped over on the spare duvets to make sure I didn't choke on my own vomit or something (not that I would ever get this paralytic in real life, btw), or whether the wicked deed had really been done – and in the event I did actually feel genuinely torn as to whether or not I really wanted to know… Strangely enough, this process of apparent waking and sudden realization that I wasn’t alone in the apartment repeated another good two or three times before I finally woke up "properly" to the sound of my alarm clock ringing (unfortunately this time still with residual hangover for real…).

Does this sudden crop of inadvertent adultery dreams mean that I now subconsciously want to slut it all about Prague…? Or does it reflect a waking fear of acting out of character / control once I’ve had a few…? Or is it simply a variation on the usual round of anxiety dreams (missing flights, fucking up at work, relapsing on the smoking front etc etc)? Interpretations on the internet (read "mostly bullshit") varied from wanton sexual deviancy to unfilled personal ambitions blah blah blah, but in my heart of hearts I actually believe such dreams mean precisely the opposite – namely that the horror and guilt experienced on realization at having inadvertently fucked up what has until now been a truly good and trust-based relationship only goes to show how much I value what I currently have and by no means would ever want to jeopardize. Which, thinking about it, makes all the more sense when I consider the all-consuming guilt and repentance I typically experience in waking life on the regrettably frequent occasions I’ve been unjustifiably stroppy, irrational, demanding or just plain bitchy (pretty much all occuring when blood sugar low, but still…) towards my eternally patient and tolerant other half – to me it seems pretty much self-evident that these dreams are simply a reflection of my very real insecurity that, even with the best will in the world, David won’t put up with my involuntary / hunger-induced belligerence forever, and this apparent ever-lasting patience with me may one day run out…

So, if you’re reading this babe, to sum it up - if I dream of accidental infidelity with the gorgeous Robert Pattinson, it’s only because I really only love you… Oh, and please don't dump me because I'm a mardy cow sometimes!!! ;-)))

Coming Soon to a Movie Theatre Near You...

Well, if I'd been worried that my last few nights had been uncharacteristically dream free (or at least forgotten), then last night has definitely put paid to any doubts in that respect, as my subconscious came up with a whole host of weird and wonderful episodes over the course of an epic 12 hour sleep...

Of these, the most in-depth dream was about a film called 'The Black Dot', which played out coherently in my mind with all the typical plot twists and turns of a real-life Hollywood movie. To give a brief synopsis, the film was set in an aspiring black American household (not quite living in the projects, but not too far off), in which a struggling single mother was raising two girls age 5 and 15 whilst studying for a Masters and PhD in Neuroscience at the same time. The father (in flashbacks revealed to have been a hard-working family man working long hours as a coach driver to provide for his wife and children) had died of leukemia some years before, and in her grief the mother had shorn both her and her children's heads as an expression of life-long solidarity with their poor dead cancer-stricken father. However, as the film went on, via various flashbacks, leaps in perspective, and narrative juxtaposition, this initial wholesome appearance was shown to be more and more an invented self-delusion of the mother herself to avoid having to confront the far more seedy reality that had previously constituted her family life... Bit by bit it was revealed that while her husband had indeed been a coach driver, this had been only as a front to hide his main role as drug-dealing kingpin, and that rather than having been a devoted family man, he had actually been planning to shoot through on them to evade the law men who'd increasingly been on his trail... Somehow the mother intercepted his attempt to flee, however, her intervention leading to the husband shooting a policeman and trying to drive off with the cops in hot pursuit, with the wife clinging desperately to the side of the vehicle to keep him from leaving them. Within seconds she inevitably lost her grip, however, hitting the tarmac with such force that it caused a sudden near-death experience, propelling her at high speed down the stereotypical tunnel of light, before everything suddenly folded in on itself just like a television turning itself off - ending in the temporary suspension of that little black dot in the middle. In a dramatic flashback of twists and turns, at the last minute of the film everything hitherto - from the shaving of heads to the obsessive study of neuroscience - was seen as a result of the mother's delusional attempt to block out reality and instead focus on her elusive search for the one thing that she felt would answer all her questions - the rediscovery and embrace of that "dying of the light" little black dot. Hmmm think I have the making of a potential blockbuster on my hands here - Spielberg and co, am open to negotiations!!! :-))

Apart from pulling an entire end-to-end psychological thriller seemingly out of my arse, other shorter, less coherent (and sadly also considerable less dramatic) dreams of last night include:

• Going to a supermarket in my old home town, filling my shopping basket with various boxes of chocolate, bumping into two old school friends at the checkout, and then - later regretting my uncharacteristically greedy purchases - offloading a bunch of Smarties on to my work team, who collectively will typically devour any type of confectionary put in front of them with the speed of a hoard of hungry locusts descending upon a cornfield.
• My boss (in between munching handfuls of Smarties) giving me a project to see how dream management could impact the working of the team, but after several nights' attempts concluding that dreams only ever present options and not solutions (though I did experience one rare moment of dream lucidity whilst liaising with the Customer Service team in Brno).
• Having a colleague and an old friend as guests in my old UK house and offering them Ricicles and Crunchy Nut Cornflakes for breakfast, but when opening the fridge having all the ice from the overhead freezer rain out on my head.
• Inviting my parents as my guests to a formal banquet, only to find to my embarrassment I was only supposed to be there in the first place as wait staff, and only got to shovel down bites of all the posh nosh in between courses.
• Attempting to strangle one particular girl who called me names in primary school, but who I couldn't bring myself to insult back at the time because she had been off school for months with social anxiety or something and I might inadvertently effect a relapse... manipulative little bitch.
• David and I getting ourselves arrested in Holland for drug taking (apart from alcohol not a very likely holiday pasttime for either of us) and other various unmentionable misdemeanours.

Hopefully will carry on this renewed burst of productivity (not to mention land a multi-million dollar movie deal!!) in the next few days and nights to come!

More Trouble with the Law...

Yet another arrest last night for an unintentional transgression, as I unexpectedly found myself getting arrested for forgetting to pay for some jewellery in Palladium mall. Unsurprisingly, I was completely and utterly terrified at the prospect of criminal prosecution and my work finding out, and kept vainly trying to convince the security staff that I was indeed a model citizen with an unblemished criminal / academic / professional record, even working myself in online crime prevention, but no-one there spoke English well enough to understand me properly. Thankfully I woke up pretty quickly though when I saw the unsympathetic Czech security guard snap on the old cavity search rubber glove...

Apart from falling foul of Czech law enforcement, other quickie dreams of the last couple of nights include:

• Inventing a flying boogie board and going on a hedonistic aerial joyride with my (non-existent) sister and partner in crime.
• Forming a really strong, protective attachment to the precocious baby daughter of my aunt, who despite being only a few months old was already self-aware, able to basically converse, and loved me genuinely back (this theme is starting to become worryingly recurrent...).
• Going on a school trip to the zoo with the Grange Hill class of '86, in the process spotting Rolly stealing all the chocolate from tuck shop and getting myself embroiled in a heated debate on 1980's racial politics with one of the more militant black boys.
• Sitting in the passenger seat of one of Sir Alan "as sure as I've got a hole in my arse" Sugar's limos, and to my horror seeing a missile in the sky overhead, launched against Britain by Iran.
• Belatedly finding out that when as a child I was in a TV chat show with the guy from 'Peep Show', but somehow forgot all about it - the quirky "twist" of the show was that for its duration I apparently kept one foot emerged in a toilet.
• Body surfing in Thailand - wheeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!

And that's pretty much it for the time being...

Too Much Time on the Internet...

A clear sign that I perhaps (ok, undeniably) spend far too many of my waking hours on the internet is last night's fairly bizarre dream on the theme of the world wide web and my own personal dedication to it...

Following on from the previous week's European and Asian nocturnal backdrops, this dream was set all the way down under in Australia, where the country just happened to be celebrating its National Day (not sure if they actually have one in real life, but for the purposes of this blog I suppose it doesn't really matter...). To mark the occasion, the country's royal family (i.e. the Brits - still officially in charge!) and a whole array of other Ozzie dignitaries / politicians etc were marching in parade down the capital's main thoroughfare and up the steps into Australia's parliament building, as the nation and its media looked on in admiration at the whole pomp and circumstance of the official ceremonies. It was at this point, however, that I launched my own planned intervention into the proceedings, swiftly circumventing the security barriers as the parade's final participants ascended the steps up to the seat of government and tagging myself on to the end - notably, dressed in a t-shirt with Facebook logos and imagery all over it and with the Facebook emblem daubed in face paint on both my cheeks (I believe the logic behind it was to somehow have the parade also represent all the many Facebook users Australia and the world...).

I was just congratulating myself at my successful attempt at promotional gate-crashing at the entrance, however, when a government security agent suddenly appeared and dragged me into one of the building's side rooms for interrogation as to what the hell I was playing at here. Suddenly my reasons for crashing the parade (i.e. to be seen spreading the Facebook love on television) seemed rather feeble, as it dawned on me that this was just the sort of ill-advised violation that could land you in jail under some obscure article of the Anti-Terrorist Act, or if not that end up getting me sacked from my job in online law enforcement for committing a televised offline security breach...

In the end though, I was lucky to get away with just a slap on the wrists, triumphantly heading right back to the office and straight on the internet to watch the ceremonies back on Youtube (luckily the television cameras had caught my good side) and see who out of my family and friends worldwide had seen me on the news after (answer = not many). I therefore attempted to prompt interest by updating my status to the deliberately provocative "Oops am in big trouble (obligatory smiley face)" - clear moral of the story (i.e. narcissistic Facebook addiction invariably leads to landing yourself in the shit sooner or later) patently not learnt then!!

Anyway, can't stop - have to check Hotmail / Facebook / dailymail.co.uk etc to see if there have been any dramatic (or otherwise) new developments in the time it's taken me to write this up... ;-)) Lol...

Colleagues and Countries

From France the other week to dreams about the Orient the last two nights, all of which for some reason involved nearly all my work colleagues in one way or another...

The first dream of three was set in China, where I had initially set forth with my dad and (younger than in reality) brother. We'd not been long into our trip, however, when at Beijing train station my dad and I decided to get on a train just to see what Chinese ones look like inside (after several real-life months spent in the country I do actually know this - like glorified cattletrucks). Just then though the train started moving, and we realised to our horror that we'd left my little brother (not the most experienced of travellers) lost and alone in the middle of one of the most teeming and disorientating metropolises on the planet. As soon as we were able, my dad and I got out at the next stop, but to our frustration couldn't seem to communicate to any of the Chinese locals present that we needed some kind, any kind of transportation (taxi, bus, private car etc) back to Beijing and my by now presumably freaking out little brother. At this point though the situation morphed, and I found myself on yet another train together with my Czech colleague and a bunch of other random people on some type of guided tour round China. Being a died-in-the-wool tour hater since practically birth (am not the sort of person who can realistically ever follow round a designated leader with a little red flag on a stick without going murderously insane), I decided pretty quickly to break away from the group, making my own way instead to the Yangtze River and Seven Gorges region, which on my last real-life trip I hadn't been able to fit in and had always wanted to see. And so it was that not long afterwards I found myself blissfully solo on my third train of the dream, heading east and taking in a beautiful sunset from the window, only then to receive a call from David who unbeknownst to me had been on the initial tour as well and was cross with me for having struck out alone - not, apparently, for leaving the group, but for the way I had gone about it and things I'd said to people in the process. Given that I myself had no memory of actually separating off from the group in the first place, I was understandably suddenly struck with anxiety about what I'd actually said and done (in the same way as you might the morning after drinking too much...), as well as gutted to have inadvertently parted from David when we could have had such a great time travelling through China together. Woke up to the second, dawning realisation that I'd only gone and left my camera with the group as well and couldn't very well get back to them now... crap.

The next night I dreamt I arrived at work in the morning, where at the entrance my Swedish and Dutch colleagues were dropping some big hints about a huge surprise that awaited me at my desk. Sitting down at my place, I found a letter informing me that I'd recently passed a company-wide written examination, and along with a select set of other employees (including a Turkish colleague from my team who'd also received the same letter) would be setting off an all-expenses-paid week-long trip to Singapore and India the very next Monday!! Initial euphoria soon mingled with increasing scepticism as to the authenticity of this message, however, as I noticed the letter was written in multi-coloured jelly pen rather than being officially typed out; the business (like many others out there at the moment) is currently cost-cutting rather than funding any superfluous company jollies; I couldn't actually remember having taken any kind of significant test of late; and - most tellingly of all - my Swedish and Dutch colleagues were sniggering away together in the corner, presumably at the ingenuity of their (well meant) little prank on the two of us... In fact the more I thought about it, the more things as a whole looked slightly off, as I realised my office didn't look like it normally did (being housed in a treehouse rather than our normal shiny corporate surroundings) and instead of computers to work on we instead all had old-style, ink-and-blotter type school desks. Suspecting at this point I might very well be dreaming, I tried to conduct some of the lucid dream tests I'd recently read about on the internet, but none of them seemed to work - still, having pretty much cottoned on nevertheless by this point, I woke up anyway, much to my own frustration at not having succeeded in prolonging my lucidity beyond initial awareness...

The Middle East was the setting of my third and final dream, as myself and my Turkish and Australian colleagues somehow found ourselves in the middle of a traditional oriental souk, each attempting to levitate 200 crown notes off the ground by way of alchemy. Of the three of us, only my Turkish colleague had managed to get the hang of it so far, leaving me and my Australian colleague utterly befuddled by the whole affair. Nor was the process of elevation made any the easier in this case by having levitation teams from other companies (notably Exxon Mobile and Accenture - the two other main expat employers in Prague) all gleefully looking on and mocking our alchemical inadequacy either...

As ever, fuck knows what any of the above means - but either way, I am still of the opinion that our office reality is probably infinitely more surreal (in the nicest possible sense!) than my dream one at any rate....... ;-))

Dilemmas Dilemmas....

Have to start by saying that I am distinctly annoyed with myself today for not having written down my dreams as soon as I woke up this morning as I usually do, as I remember having quite a few interesting ones last night, which apart from the one below I now for the life of me can't recall... Must exercise better discipline in future!

That said, at least the single one I did remember for once actually varied this time from my usual formulaic mum / dad / brother / school theme (just writing this blog has now made me rather self-consciously aware of the recurrently retrospective nature of my subconscious), in that it actually for once a) looked forward and not back and b) finally featured my real-life other half - hitherto conspicuous only by his absence from the vast majority of my nocturnal recollections so far...

Could my boyfriend's notable nocturnal absenteeism to date be due to my feeling so secure in the relationship that my normally turbulent subconscious does not actually need to thrash out any un-worked through emotions where he's concerned in my sleep, I wonder? (Which is more than I can say for the rest of my family, apparently.) Or does David occupy so much of my waking thought that my nocturnal mind is - quite frankly - simply sick of the subject? Or is my subconscious just so determinedly past-orientated that it has little to no place left over in order to contemplate my future?? On the other hand maybe, with boyfriend living in one country and me in another, it is simply a case of "out of sight out of (subliminal) mind"... In fact, over the course of this (admittedly still rather short-lived) blog, I think I've dreamed more about fantasy boyfriend Robert Pattinson than I have done my real-life one (and even two of those occurred when he was actually sleeping next to me...).

Breaking the mold last night, however, I dreamt David was accompanying me as I embarked on a second Year Abroad - this time in France (as opposed to my initial real-life one in Germany), an obvious reflection of my recent ummings and ahhings as to whether to one day do a Masters on the Continent or not. In the dream David was basically just escorting me as I arrived in a très joli, typically gaullic, medieval little town - just the type of place the Europhile in me absolutely adores. Together we moved into my pre-arranged digs (to my joy I found I was occupying the whole attic floor of a pretty, wood-beamed old house) and we started to unpack my things (including - notably - a collection of battered but most beloved antique books, which to my knowledge don't actually exist in real-life). Needless to say, at this point I was seriously excited about embarking on a new stage of my life and making the most of all la belle vie en France had to offer, but at the same time this sense of heady euphoria was still tinged with a very real sadness that David once again was only just helping me in setting up there, and would have to go back to the UK again for work within the next few days. The one small consolation in this respect lay in knowing that geographically speaking I was now that bit closer to him than I had been in Prague, so flights would at least be cheaper / shorter and the Eurostar readily on hand for getting him over to me more frequently at weekends than had previously been the case.

No sooner had he actually left though then the initial excitement suddenly faded, as all at once I felt myself lonely and adrift in the gaping attic of an unfamiliar house in a strange land, which now David had gone home no longer seemed to hold such anticipated promise and vibrance. To counteract the resultant depression, I first tried to draw comfort from my treasured collection of old books, only for the pages to start falling out in chunks from each and every tomb, forcing me to hurriedly put them back for their own protection (probably some obscure symbolism at play here). Soon after that my mood then took yet another drastic turn for the worse, as to my sheer and absolute horror I found out that the whole attic apartment was not in fact meant for me alone, but that the living room and kitchen also doubled up as a café for hoards of pontificating French studenty types in the day / evening, leaving me only my little bedroom and tiny en suite as a wholly inadequate refuge from both people (there being no lock on my dream bedroom door) and their resultant noise (my absolute pet hate in shared accommodation - in fact I still retain one selfish bastard cunt of an inconsiderate med student on my non-negotiable death list as a result of his incessant musical torment over my first year of university). Unsurprisingly enough, in my waking life I live blissfully alone in my quiet and cosy, mercifully people-free (apart from David on occasion) little studio - my own personal sanctuary from the madness that lies beyond the threshold...

So to cut a long story short, I don't really need Sigmund Freud here to tell me that all of the above is clearly just a noctural regurgitation of my long-standing waking dilemma as to my future country of abode... By no means is it an easy thing to be torn between a man you love residing in a country you hate, or a life without him in a continent you've loved since childhood and planned to build a life (and not just a four year hiatus). No surprise then that the emotions of the dream ran the whole same gauntlet (euphoria, bittersweetness, sadness, conflict, fear) as I experience on a pretty much daily basis in real life - ending as usual in the same old inertia and ambivalence as to what to do for the best... For now though it's just a case of taking things as they come and seeing where life takes us, which when it comes down to it is no more and no less than any of us can really ever do I guess - and in many ways I should really consider myself privileged that I'm even in the position (great boyfriend, amazing life abroad etc) to be presented with such a choice in the first place...

To wind up all this inner turmoil (waking and sleeping!) for now though, all I can say is that at this current moment I'm planning nothing more than to just enjoy a sunny Prague 2010 (and beyond...) for as long as I can, and the more of it spent with David visiting the better!!! :-)))

Shrek meets Subconscious...

A bit of a psychedelic one last night...

Basically, I randomly found myself living in a kind of animated Shrek-style fairy tale universe, where I unfortunately enough resided in squalor and misery in a tumbledown old house in the middle of a graveyard with my cruel drunkard of a father and indifferent older brother. Back in happier times, there had also been a mother who I both still dimly remembered and sorely missed, but she'd mysteriously disappeared off the scene a few years back and none of us knew what had become of her since.

One night, however, whilst completing yet another Cinderella-style hard day's toil, I happened to spot some strange glimmering in the corner of the graveyard, which I went over to investigate. As I moved towards the light, suddenly an illuminated UFO (classic discus shape) sprang out of the shadows, with none other than my own fairy tale mum (of Spanish appearance and clad in gypsy headscarf) sitting at its open entrance! I tearfully called out to her and she back to me, but by this time the UFO had already sped higher into the sky, pausing only briefly for my mother and I to get one last look at each other before flying off into the distant realms of space... Understandably shaken by this unexpected encounter, I nevertheless still found it distinctly comforting in that I now knew my mum was at least alive, and for some reason also sensed that the inhabitants of the UFO were a benign rather than a malevolent (though undeniably equally as captive) force. On the other hand though, my long-lost mother had now been shown to be more out of reach than ever, utterly at the mercy of alien entities, and presumably lodged on some far-off planet out in the distant corners of space - in short virtually impossible to ever track down again...

And so time passed, as it does in dreams, only for me to awake one day to find that the extra-terrestrials had taken my brother too, much to my obvious disappointment and dismay - not because in this case I'd liked my characteristically cold and distant older sibling particularly, but because he'd presumably been taken off to the same planet as my mother to be reunited with her, while I on the other hand had to stay down in my unhappy existence on earth with my arsehole of an alcoholic father. Luckily for me though, in the end I didn't have more than six months to wait until the spaceship finally returned to pick me up as well, whisking me off to a moon-like planet, which in the event turned out to be some kind of holistic / therapeutic retreat type place, to which the aliens (never seen in the flesh, but as I earlier suspected, not just benign but actually downright benevolent) brought humans who they deemed to be in emotional need. As it turned out, my mum had all the time been suffering from both depression and domestic abuse at the hands of my cruel father (I'd been too young to pick up on it back then), and so the aliens had brought her here to rebuild her battered self-esteem by means of sewing, planting vegetables and taking part in other wholesome, group-based therapeutic activities - that one time I'd spotted her in the UFO actually turned out to have been just one of many unseen escorted earth visits she'd made so that she could observe her children growing up from afar (for reasons unexplained, the aliens believed that only when she was truly recovered could we all be reunited).

In the meantime, however, the aliens had unfortunately been making significantly less psychological headway with my strong-willed older brother, who as it turned out had only been taken earlier as he was in greater emotional need (from which the aforementioned coldness and indifference of course first originated). Rather than responding to the alien's good-hearted, softly-softly therapeutical approach, however, my brother had instead proceeded to run rampage on the unassuming planet, setting up his own miniature empire in one far-out crater populated by meerkats and a few unfortunate enslaved humans, who he'd forced to dress up in medieval attire and act as his own personal royal court. Deciding enough was enough now that the rest of his family were resident on the planet, the aliens (still mysteriously unseen) accompanied me and my mum to the crest of the crater, where in German (wrongly, as I worked out once awake) I valiantly proclaimed the crater and court free of my brother's evil dominion. To our initial disappointment, however, at first there was no discernible reaction to be seen among either the crater's meerkat or human inhabitants, but luckily then after just a few minutes (to both my surprise and - needless to say - utter joy) bottle after bottle of white wine started spouting one by one from the crater's tubular entrance, which apparently in itself symbolized the ultimate power and pull of the family over the petty power struggles of its individual members... Humbled, my brother finally emerged from the crater last, initially reluctant, but in the end overwhelmed by the sheer joy at the three of us all being finally reunited (lots of tears and hugs all round), with the heady euphoria of reunion finally breaking through his hard exterior emotional defenses and ending his misguided power hunger for good.

So to cut a long story short, estranged family members are emotionally reunited, mother overcomes depression by means of holistic healing without the use of conscious-altering prescription drugs, wayward son is brought back into line by virtue of strong family love and support, deadbeat dad's not in the picture but no-one seems to mind - quite the modern-day happy ending it seems, but applicable to my own personal family life how...?!?!?!?!?

Someone psychoanalyze me please!!!!!!!!!

Noooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!

Nightmare of nightmares - last night I dreamed fantasy love-of-my-life, Robert Pattinson, by some sheer miraculous act of God, actually climbed into bed with me, but to my horror I found I was wearing my comfie bedtime granny pants and tights!!!!! Utter mortification!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Come Dine with Me - Episode 3

For some strange reason, Channel 4 culinary reality TV show 'Come Dine with Me' truly seems to have permeated my sub-conscious of late, with this the third dream based on this highly entertaining, dining-based series in as many weeks...

Is this a reflection of my underlying competitiveness / unconscious cravings for fame and attention? An indication that I should vary my (admittedly rather mundane pasta-for-one / wine based) diet more? Or have I just been watching that one Sunday afternoon omnibus session too many recently?!?!? Either way, as with both my earlier dreams on the subject (see episodes 1 and 2), again this episode had a corresponding socio-cultural twist, following on from the previous religion / sexuality / family based themes this time with education - or more specifically, my own.

In yet another dream flashback, in this episode I basically found myself back in my Home Economics kitchen at my old school, with my old HE teacher (not the obese one who furtively took bites out of all the food we'd cooked after the lesson - the other one) dividing the class up into teams to each serve as joint competitors in a new episode of 'Come Dine with Me'. However, in this case there would also be a variation from the standard 'Come Dine' format (in which the host partakes in the meal they have prepared) in that each of our teams' efforts would be judged by an independent panel - one table of 15 judges per team (which as a team we actually had to wait on as well as cook for) - and the highest scoring table would win the night.

Initially my main concern was not to be put in a team with a certain real-life snide little bitch with whom I actually did share my year 10 and 11 HE class (see entry on recurrent dreams), but once this transpired not to be the case, my worries quickly moved on to keeping order within the team (how to divide responsibilities between cooking / waiting etc etc), coming up with an appropriate menu (quickly decided on as crispy spring rolls followed by Thai curry and sticky rice), and the sheer logistics of cooking and serving 15 people at once, when the most I think I've ever cooked for at one time in my real life has been about 8 (and then of course I wasn't being competitively judged). Unfortunately, however, things were quick to unravel for my team, as we soon realised we didn't have any coconut cream for the curry, none of us knew how to make spring rolls, and we had no time to shop for essential ingredients / research alternative recipes etc.

In the end, I actually decided the sheer and utter pressure of it all easily outweighed both the kudos of being on television and the (increasingly remote) chance of winning a share of the thousand pounds prize, so simply walked out of the competition, leaving my former classmates (none of whom I felt even the slightest guilt whatsoever towards for leaving in the lurch) to haphazardly muddle on in my absence. Instead, I decided I much preferred cooking in my usual convivial, unpressurized surroundings of a small group of friends in my own cosy flat, so went out an bought loads of new ingredients (including, I believe, fresh gnocchi, prosciutto ham, and several expensive bottles of lovely Robert's wine) to rustle up a feast for my Prague girlfriends. Sadly for me though, for some reason I rather thoughtlessly only sent out an invite just hours before I actually wanted to host my dinner, so at such short notice no-one was able to make it, and I ended up having to polish off my duly delicious concoctions and much of the wine all by myself instead... :-((

Am not sure what any of the above means from a psycho-analytical angle, but whatever the deep psychological ramifications of this continued reoccurence of night-time reality TV, I for one am definitely hoping for a next nocturnal weekly installment... :-))

Fucked Up Feet

Another strange one last night...

Basically, I dreamt I was walking round some scenic lake with my brother and my mum, when I felt some discomfort in my shoe, which turned out to be caused by a small piece of metal lodged in my foot. Assuming it was just some random speck of something that had worked itself into my shoe, I bent down to gently tug it out, only to find that it was actually just the tip of a big thick inch-long nail that had somehow lodged itself unnoticed in my foot. Grimacing, I tried to carefully remove the nail, only for this to then cause a sudden massive rectangular hole to open up across my foot, from my ankle joint to the start of my toes. Rather disgustingly, I could see right down to the bottom of the hole, where a load of blood and other gunk were slushing around at the bottom.

Unfortunately, my brother (a doctor in real life) claimed not to be specialised in feet, but tried to call round some of his medic friends for advise, while in the meantime I started panicking about germs and dirt getting into the hole and searching round in vain for some appropriate covering to the wound. In desperation I then asked my brother to take me to A&E, but he said that would be full of drunks (a true enough affliction of the NHS on Friday and Saturday nights...) and suggested the three of us instead catch the bus to the local hospital. By this point I was seriously starting to freak out, as (again according to my brother) the hole was preventing proper bloodflow to my foot, which would soon cause it to wither up permanently and possibly be amputated if we couldn't get medical attention soon.

Not a particularly enviable situation already one might think, but actually at this point things took yet another drastic turn for the worse, as my mum as suddenly as inexplicably turned all ashen-faced and zombified, and without saying a word to either of us, simply got off the bus and started walking away... With just seconds till the bus doors closed, I found myself suddenly torn betwen getting urgently needed medical treatment for my foot or getting to my mum, so was forced to make the split-second decision to quickly jump off and hobble vainly along after her, with one lame foot dragging limply behind me, as all the while my insensible mother slowly and surely drew ever more out of reach...

And then I woke up, really wanting my mum... :-((

Snippets II

Dreams from just last night alone...

• Inadvertently killing my oversized pet angel fish by forgetting to put it into water when I cleaned the tank (twice), then realising that four hamsters and a parrot had also met untimely ends on mine and David's watch. Not looking particularly promising for Smudge and Fudge (real-life future kittens / child substitutes) then...
• Being in an episode of Eastenders with Janine and Pat, getting into the evitable soap bitch fight and accidentally stabbing Pat in the stomach in the struggle, then ringing 999 to report Pat being mortally wounded and Janine also starting to vomit up blood and sludge due to a prior heart condition. Unfortunately forgot to leave an address for the ambulance to go to, then kept getting cut off when trying to call back (a recurrent theme with 999 calls in my dreams, for some reason...).
• My stepsister joining some weird Asian sun-worshipping cult in Hampshire and having to go in and retrieve her with my mum and Alan, with me taking great delight in mocking all the deluded, beardy-weirdie, cult member, loony types along the way... :-))
• One of my colleagues not knowing who Bob Marley was, and me in utter incredulity singing 'No Woman No Cry' and 'Buffalo Soldier' in a vain attempt to jog their memory.
• My favourite piece of grafitti art being grafittied over at the Tesnov underpass, and then the next day to my disappointment finding that it was...

And that's all for now...

Dream Come Dine With Me - Episode 2

Finally a follow up to the first episode of my personal dream series of 'Come Dine With Me', with contemporary issues yet again playing as big a role as the actual food featured in the show...

While last week's episode was themed around the "big" issues of race, religion and sexuality, this one on the other hand was more focused on the family and the interpersonal relationships between its individual members.

Host one, for example, held a traditional wedding feast, which while scoring highly on the ambience, lost out on food points due to the menu's typically Czech predominance of meat and dumplings at every single bloody course (classic real-life example). Couple number two, rather unfortunately, had just lost their son, so the theme was rather depressingly funereal, with everyone required to dress in black and conversation not exactly flowing as a result... My own event, however, was divorce based, which basically meant having to host a dinner at my Dad's old house, where I used to live in convivial disarray with him and my little brother. To my horror (but not exactly surprise) though on this occasion, I discovered that no-one had done the shopping, most of the food in the fridge had gone mouldy, and all we had in the cupboards was dried pasta and a jar of curry-flavoured Chicken Tonight. Then my mum (who'd left the family home in real life as in dream) randomly decided to come back to us after all, and I hugged her tightly and cried hot, undignified tears of sheer and utter relief (apparently forgetting, at least temporarily, about impending dinner party disaster...).

So all in all not quite such a riotous event as dream number one (in which I at least got a bloody curry), but oh well - let's see what episode three will bring... ;-))

I Love You Robert Pattinson!!!

Oddly enough considering my other half is currently volcano-bound at my side, I've now officially had two adulterous dreams concerning my other, as yet fantasy boyfriend (the divine, sublime, gorgeous, beautiful Robert Pattinson - naturally) in as many days...

Oh joy of joys, in this last dream I noticed him sitting looking disarmingly gorgeous at the bar in the same hotel I was staying in at the time, and approached him (justifiably nervous considering his god-like perfection and my by comparison decidedly hum-drum looks), only to hit it off and soon find myself introduced to his band of (almost but not quite as) hot, buff, James Dean look-a-like, older brothers. Well, to cut a long story short, my friends hooked up with his brothers etc, with myself miraculously landing the star prize - much to my own delight and amazement, obviously.

Things took a turn for the bizarre, however, when among the brothers, their girlfriends, and their merry band of inevitable teenage groupies, a strange fad of dying one's face green à la Shrek for some reason inexplicably took hold. Unfortunately, as dying one's skin a whiter shade of pale centuries ago led to incurable mercury poisoning, so too did dying one's skin green via a coloured form of crystal meth lead to permanently stained skin and social leprosy outside of a select group of fellow Shrek-faces. But if RPatz was doing it, I was obviously going to do it too, same as when he asked me to stop taking the Pill two days after meeting so we could have a baby together - despite my own personal reservations as to this rather premature turn of events.

After that it all got a bit convoluted, with my brother somehow also getting in on the action (he's not at all gay in real life, but the Pattinson pack's seductive charms apparently drew even him in), my step-brother getting engaged to one of the groupies and having a wedding cake in the shape of his face, and my mum quite vocally disapproving of any of the above at all...

But I don't care as I LOVE ROBERT PATTINSON, even if it does mean unwanted pregnancies and dying my face green!!!!!!!!!

Snippets

Alas, I don't remember all my weird and wonderful dreams in their entirety, but often just vague snippets of them, for example...

• My granddad (probably the most unlikely person in the world to ever do this) organising a Halloween party on my behalf for all my friends, family and colleagues, and everyone thinking I was really cool as result.
• At said party eating both a Praha Bakeshop croissant and a big lasagne, afterwards feeling duly guilt-stricken, before then realising to my utter joy and relief that it was a dream, so going on to attack the massive slabs of lemon cheesecake also on the table with conscience clear.
• Finding random clips from childhood on Youtube and sharing them on Facebook with Dad and Dan.
• Collecting a visiting Daniel and girlfriend from Prague airport, only to find my muppet of a brother had totally forgotten what hotel he was staying at here.
• Having someone bump into me from behind and doing a judo throw on them in self-defence, only to find out I'd winded a poor little 12 year old boy and made him cry (oh the guilt...).
• Visiting a haunted cinema with my Mum, which unleashed a virus '28 Days Later' style that first manifested itself with crippling depression, then made people evil and demented - to my horror and despair starting with my poor old Mum...
• Walking down a Facebook path with (non-demented) Mum, meeting old friends on the way and discussing what to have for dinner (cauliflower cheese was in the end decided upon).
• Going to Alton Towers with Dad and Dan and my Dad kicking off at a family abusing their kids (this actually did once nearly happen in real life at Disneyland, Florida...).
• Playing Jason Donovan in 'Joseph & the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat' and being thrown in a pit by the 11 brothers, where some weird insect like creatures invited me to eat them in order to stay alive.
• Forgetting (yet again!!) to do my final year at university, cracking under the stain, and climbing out of the window of my Halls of Residence in order to avoid doing my exams.
• Being a cattle rancher in the American Mid-West and having my herd of cows chase me into the farmhouse and try to ram their way into the bathroom, and having to shoot each of them in the head to save myself.
• Buying broccoli cup-a-soup at Albert (not sure why this one...).

That's all for now - more to come in the next week or two am sure... :-))

Yet Another Trip Down Memory Lane...

Yet another recurrent dream last night about my old house last night, in which I arrived home late at night, only to disturb some teenage burglar who ran out of the door as I opened it without actually taking anything or myself having the chance to see his face. Shaken up, I rung my Dad at his new wife’s place (where he has been living the last ten odd years since the house in question was sold up), but he didn't want to come round, so in the end I was relieved to have David come over and help me finally calm down and feel safe again instead.

Given that this was the house where many events of the infamous “Black Decade” in my life played out, and which I was ultimately happy to leave to embark on my own independent adult life, unencumbered by traumatizing familial drama, it’s long been a source of consternation for me that I should keep returning to the place in my dreams today – usually in a state of ambivalence or mild surprise, but always with a sense of persistent déjà vu... Looking up “old house dreams” on the internet I found the following:

To see your childhood home, your hometown, or a home that you previously lived in … reflects aspects of yourself that were prominent or developed during the time you lived in that home. You may experience some feelings or unfinished expression of emotions that are now being triggered by a waking situation.

To see an old house in your dream may symbolize your need to update your mode of thinking. This points to issues that probably are resurfacing in your current life, and need to be looked at, analyzed, and healed so you can move forward and not look back. If you find yourself repeating the same old tired mistakes, or dealing with the same old tired fears, chances are you will have this dream.

Well, that certainly all makes sense, but as I mentioned in this earlier post, expunging the past from one’s mind without spending hundreds or thousands on therapy is no easy feat, though admittedly I have often considered hypnotism as a quickie alternative route to putting the past to rest… Until then though, I guess I will just carry on using good old Great British emotional repression as a means to deal with my dysfunctional past – at least it's bloody free!!

Ok, THAT was weird...

Am feeling a little sheepish this morning, having just found out that I apparently attacked my visiting other half in a state of semi-sleep last night... Naturally the "attack" was fairly girly and pathetic, occuring when David woke me up by climbing over me on the way back from getting some apple juice. For reasons unknown, I started screaming and hitting feebly out, apple juice went flying, and a poor shocked David (who apparently I didn't even recognise) was left to calm me down and try to make me realise it was indeed him and not some random attacker who'd penetrated my abode with nefarious intent. Needless to say, I don't remember a single thing about the whole bizarre episode...

That said, perhaps I was just justifiably annoyed he'd interrupted my quite frankly sublime dream about Robert Pattinson (who I love with a passion as burning as it is unacknowledged / unrequited). Basically I dreamt I was in 'Twilight' as Bella, and we'd found a way to turn him back from vampire to human 'Daybreakers' style by having him stab himself in the heart with a crystal blade and drinking his own spilt blood at the same time. Needless to say, at first I was absolutely overjoyed to finally be able to consummate our as yet chaste relationship (as a vampire he feared in the heat of the moment he'd lose control and accidentally bite / crush me to death), marry him and have his beautiful beautiful babies, but unfortunately as it turned out, as a human he didn't like me as much, as the scent of my blood no longer held such addictive hold over him, while from my point of view he wasn't as good-looking in his newly acquired non-vampiric state either (watching 'Remember Me' with fellow vamp-addict Kate has proven this hypothesis to be completely utterly false in real life, however.).

So all in all, sorry David for my nocturnal violence / infidelty - I do still love you really, promise!! ;-))

Confused

What a funny old day we had yesterday. Disaster recovery exercises, volcanic ash, historic televised election debates, and David (boyfriend not Cameron) flying over from UK to Prague (by the absolute skin of his teeth!) to visit me too... :-))

No surprise then that this professional, political and logistical chaos was reflected in my personal dream world last night, as I dreamt I put multiple key aspects of my own life to the public vote via the internet. Key issues at stake in this case included:

• Should I do a Masters?
• If so, in what subject (Law, HR, MBA)?
• UK or Prague in the long run?

Odd really, considering my current plans are very definitely to stay in my current job as long as possible (which I like and consider myself bloody lucky to have in the midst of a global economic recession), but haven't ruled out a Masters one day - just haven't a clue what in, and these days don't think I could ever muster up any of the old intellectual discipline that got me through Cambridge first time round...

Anyway going back to the present, last night I also dreamt that both David and I overslept till 5.30pm, thereby missing out on a planned fun-filled day of Praha Bakeshop / cinema / Zanzibar / Artisan etc and being quite disproportionately distraught about the fact, especially as due to the onset of volcanic ash he had to fly home on the Sunday rather than the Tuesday after all.

Luckily for me, in real life he is well and truly grounded here with me for the foreseeable future - so keep on erupting Mr Volcano, for the time being I really don't mind... ;-)))

Back to Skool...

Oh the joy of going to sleep these days – I never know what new material for this blog I am subconsciously going to come up with by the next morning… :-))))))

Last night, for example, I dreamt that my parents packed me off to Eton to repeat the education I so badly fucked up first time round. It might sound odd that someone whose lowest ever exam grade was an A (only though sheer hard slog I should add, not natural intelligence!!), who was appointed Scholar of the College at King’s (thereby giving me the right to have a duel on King’s College Bridge and graze my horse on university land), who even somehow managed to pull off a First at Cambridge (albeit a sympathy one of just 0.65% above the percentile) would doubt the value of their academic career, but the truth is that six odd years on since graduation and I am still plagued by my naïve folly as a starry-eyed teenager in having chosen to study the humanities rather than something more directly career-orientated instead. While on paper the grades might look impressive, in practice eight years of study between GCSE and graduation have pretty much left me with not much more than an intricate (if, professionally speaking, fairly redundant) knowledge of the European dictators, a smattering of German, and even dodgier French – it’s not like I know anything of any subjects even remotely practical like, oh I don’t know, say Law, Economics, IT, Engineering, Design, Maths, Medicine etc etc. Admittedly this educational deficiency hasn’t prevented me from rising (marginally) up the corporate ranks at home and abroad since graduation, though in truth this is largely down to my innate (oh ok then, utterly anal retentive) organizational abilities, articulacy, and a healthy dose of common sense as much as anything – am still waiting for someone to point out that I don’t actually really know anything…

Anyway, the irony of the dream in this case is that in real life I did actually attend Eton for a time, at a summer school aimed to groom promising students for Oxbridge applications / interviews. I like to think that I got to sleep in Prince William’s (then still gorgeous and also in attendance during term time) own room, but in reality I probably just got to bed down on some ancient mattress imbued with centuries’ worth of schoolboy wank / squishy remnants of public school bum-rape. Unlike in real life though, this time in the dream I was no longer dazzled by all the gilded spires, ancient archways and hallowed halls characteristic of such “pomp and circumstance” elite historical institutions, but basically just said “fuck this” and went off to do a Masters in something actually useful in a (perhaps less aesthetically pleasing but infinitely more beneficial in the long-run) vocational establishment instead.

On the opposite end of the social / geographical spectrum, the same night I also dreamt that I was holed up in some bog-standard northern comprehensive with Sophie from ‘Coronation Street’, under siege by an enraged Ryan, who was trying to burn down the school in revenge for Sophie having caused the break-up between him and that other blonde non-lesbian one. A dream that lends itself less to obvious interpretation perhaps, but then again given the predominance of moronic arsonist drones roaming round Oop North, maybe this was just a reflection of modern-day Broken British reality – that or a sign of my own personal overexposure to the soaps / the online Daily Mail I guess… :-))))))

Another Baby Dream…

Ok, now I am officially disturbed.

Three baby dreams in as many weeks is definitely enough to have me perturbed to say the least, especially considering my real-life deep-seated antipathy towards all snot-nosed little brats under the age of 21 (oh alright then, 25).

And yet, last night I dreamt I was on the tram in Prague, and a mother got out leaving her baby in a pram on board. At a bit of a loss as to what to do, I took the kid (a baby girl about 1 year old) home and gave her some Milka chocolate while I considered how to best return her to the bosom of her (admittedly somewhat negligent to leave her on a tram in the first place) family. Unfortunately I didn’t know any of the telephone numbers for the local Czech police / Public Transport / Lost Property Offices etc, so in the end decided to wait until I saw some appeals on Czech news (which in real life I would never watch, let alone understand) for the return of the missing infant and call in then, in the meantime looking after the kid myself. In the event the baby (who, for want of a better name, I temporarily christened “Heather”) turned out of be a true bundle of cuddly, well-behaved loveliness, who never cried, smiled and laughed at all my attempts to entertain her, mercifully never took a shit, and – despite her tender years – even spoke in bursts of English every now and then too. All it took was 48 odd hours in my care for me to become well and truly attached, only then to randomly bump into her (conveniently also English-speaking) mum outside my flat while taking the baby out for a stroll. Of course it was only the right thing to do to hand the baby (whose real name, I found out, was – unsurprisingly – little Klarko) back to her rightful owner, but to my own surprise actually found myself terribly sad to do so, and that my life suddenly felt empty and meaningless in a way I hadn’t even been aware of before…

Before going straight secretly off the Pill in a reckless bid at real-life motherhood, however, I decided to do a bit of internet research on the subject first to see if I could come up with any alternative explanations for my sudden and uncharacteristic burst of maternity-based dreams. Below follows a selection of online interpretations of baby-related dreams:

Dreaming of babies can mean you could benefit from paying more attention to your own needs, or are taking on too much responsibility. Also it could show the vulnerable part of yourself that has to be protected, or perhaps you are inwardly nurturing some new ideas or feelings.

Dreaming of a baby in your dream means innocence, warmth and new beginnings. Alternatively, it represents your unfulfilled goals and a sense of lacking in your life, or is indicative of a vulnerable part of yourself that is deprived of attention and needs nurturing. Dreams about babies may also symbolize your helplessness and your fears of letting others become aware of your own vulnerabilities.

Baby Dreams = A new event, happening, beginning for the subject of the dream. Wish fulfillment. Fills one's sense of lacking or incompleteness.

My own personal interpretation is that the babies in each of my recent dreams represent a feeling of completeness, which corresponds to a persistent nagging feeling in my waking life that something is missing at the moment in my life – definitely not a baby (in real life I am no more broody than I was before), but more a broader sense of direction, permanence and security, which are all unsurprisingly hard to foster when one is living a single life abroad (the alienation and disorientation of which is a notable feature of the dream as well).

Don’t get me wrong - I absolutely love my Prague life and don’t regret a thing in moving out here, but four years on and in all honesty it’s not all living the expat dream these days either, especially not when you have a boyfriend inconveniently located in another country, family all a thousand odd miles away, and friends who seem to arrive then promptly leave again with depressing regularity... I don’t want a baby and all going to plan hopefully never will, but it would be nice to feel that someone out here was truly on my side and that I didn’t always have to stand so firmly on my own two feet in a foreign land – basically to feel that sense of “completeness” which at the moment I only ever get for an hour or two’s Skype chat at the end of the day, and the odd weekend now and then when the other half comes out to visit.

So in short, baby = David….????????????????????????????

Dreaming within a Dream

Last night I dreamt I was back in World War 2 on a military submarine, not as a naval officer, but as a teenage member of the wives and children quota also on board (not sure about the military Health & Safety logic of that one...). Needless to say, being a teenager stuck in an enclosed space, I soon started getting up to mischief with the other kids on board, with five of us recklessly heading out AWOL on the submarine dingies to live it up sailing the seven seas, fighting off great white sharks with our dingy oars, somehow managing to even squeeze in a trip to George at Asda, and at the same time inadvertently straying into enemy German territory and having to be retrieved at great risk to our host submarine. On being returned to our sub, we were all naturally prepared to get our wrists slapped, only to find out from my very pissed-off mum that (even as juvenile, non-members of the armed forces) we were due to go before a military tribunal the next day, with execution a probable consequence of our treasonable actions in accidentally entering enemy waters – a punishment which didn’t quite fit the crime I thought... Naturally I was shocked and panic-stricken, but still somehow drew strange comfort and reassurance from the fact that lasagne was on the submarine menu for that evening, so at the very least I would have a decent last meal.

As it happened, the next day my real-life American ex-marine big boss was overseeing the tribunal, and was all in favour of execution by firing squad for all of us, but was overruled my the other military judges on the grounds that we were all still minors and hadn’t acted with deliberate treasonable intent. Instead, we were all sentenced to community service for the remainder of the war, with myself being packed off back to dry land to serve in a private old people’s home. In fact this turned out to be an absolute cushy little number, as I got plush free accommodation (with TV in room) and three meals a day plus regular pay to basically just sit around and watch ‘Countdown’ with the elderly residents, and occasionally help one of them to the loo etc. Soon after though the war ended when we nuked Germany, and I woke up – or so I thought – at my lovely Auntie Anne’s house in the idyllic English countryside, which I had apparently been visiting at the time of the whole submarine debacle dream...

I started writing down my dream as per usual before I forgot it, but kept losing my notes and getting distracted by my mum going on about making a family day trip to Blackpool the next day. Given that Blackpool is a nasty, has-been, chav-infested shithole with a sewer for a sea, I naturally wasn’t particularly enamoured by this idea and wanted to stay with my wonderful Auntie Anne instead, but apparently wasn’t permitted to bow out. Luckily though, the next day I overslept till 5pm (much to my own amazement), waking to find that in the end only my mum and her new husband Rolf Harris had bothered with Blackpool after all, and all my relatives on my mum’s side, my brother and his fiancé, and even a few of my old mates (specifically Charlie, Heather and Hayley) were all assembling at my Auntie Anne’s (beloved matriarch of the family) house for a traditional family gathering instead, and my Auntie Anne was making one of her famous Sunday roasts with all the trimmings – oh joy!!!!!!

And then I woke up for real, completely disorientated as to where I was and what time of day it was, and rather disappointed that I had missed out the roast after all...

No Rest for the Wicked...

Well, with one shift ending 10pm yesterday, and the next starting at 7am today, it’s hardly surprising that my scant sleeping hours in between should end up being populated by mainly work related dreams…

For some reason, however, in this case work intersected with school, with my boss as my old A-level history teacher, my colleagues as fellow classmates, and myself still living at my old house (that old chestnut again…) with my highly disorganised dad and brother, whose innate inability to get up and out on time in the mornings usually resulting in us getting dropped off late in the mornings and me getting unfairly bollocked for it. Not a lot happened beyond that really, apart from my boss pushing me to also become a history teacher, ordering a latte from downstairs which annoyingly turned out to have a load of cake / biscuity mush in the bottom, and finding out that Gareth from ‘The Office’ now headed up our Finance Department and for reasons unexplained wanted to get me fired / expelled.

Dream took a turn for the bizarre when I suddenly found a load of these little motherfuckers slithering round my socks and screamed blue bloody murder until my brother “The Doctor” got them out again.

And that’s about it really.

A Night in the Life of a Chronic Dreamer…

Well, if I ever thought blogging about my dreams would automatically lead to a natural diminishment in ongoing material, I was definitely worrying needlessly if last night is anything to go by… In the space of just 11 short hours, somehow my manic subconscious managed to come up with all of the below – and those are just the ones I actively remember…

Dreaming that John Alford of 1990s Grange Hill / London’s Burning fame took part in a reality TV show to land him a “real” job now that his acting career has long since dived. I actually ended up getting annoyed that (presumably whoring themselves out to reality TV) Sainsburies actually fast-tracked him as “management material”, when in fact he is really just a has-been child actor who fucked up his career by dealing coke to a journalist and was too dim to get any proper qualifications via his elite Grange Hill private tuition (I know this because in a fit of nostalgia I recently watched this on Youtube, and he definitely wasn’t the sharpest knife in the box even back then – ah bless little Zammo though).

Dreaming that a red pool of dark blood starting seeping through the bathroom wall of the house I was renting on holiday in Africa with my brother, while outside new waves of blood were streaming by so frequently that we actually had to jump between them to stop getting our feet all bloodied. We later found out that the rivers of blood resulted from massacres between two warring African tribes (the Bwana and the Tutsis), who were mutually macheting each other to death down river. Daniel and I as the only mzungus on the ground were dispatched to reestablish order, which involved failed attempts at inter-tribal mitigation and flying on mattresses dispatching food parcels over the newly thrown up refugee camps on either side. Eventually we were flown out by the British government, both traumatized by the scenes of human barbarity and sheer depravity we had witnessed and utterly despairing about the current state of much of sub-Saharan Africa. Imperialistic you say? 1994 Rwandan genocide demonstrates otherwise, me thinks.

Dreaming that I watched an episode of eighties classic cartoon, My Little Pony, in which one little pony is happily living by herself in a little house on the moon, with only couple of mute punctuation marks with legs (which, apparently, also reside on the moon) for company, but is persuaded to go back down and live in My Little Pony land by some other interfering little ponies who don’t think it’s healthy to live such an isolated existence. Put up in a room in the mansion of one of the other do-gooder pony’s benevolent fathers (do the dads get called My Big Stallions I wonder…??), despite her best efforts the moon little pony just can’t seem to integrate into normal equine society – she just isn’t able to socialize normally or perform simple day-to-day transactions like going shopping or ordering food, gets freaked out by scary public transport systems and busy roads, and inadvertently frustrates the very busy-body ponies who brought her down there in the first place by failing to conform to their condescending expectations of how an individual should behave and what constitutes an appropriate lifestyle choice. In the end it’s agreed that she should go back to her solitary life on the moon, only to find that her lunar-located house has been re-leased in her absence, and she has to agree to a monthly rent hike in order to move back in.

And some quickie recollections:

Driving a car remotely via internet, but having the internet crash on me, in turn causing a (luckily comparatively minor) car crash.
Getting an unexpected parcel delivered full of lots of original Garfield comics and toy jelly monsters, and being pretty jolly pleased about it.
Having my little flat being bombasted by tennis ball sized hailstones.
Hearing my doorbell ring and finding a big scary 6 foot Czech Frankenstein type lady at the door, and screaming.

No wonder I always find it so bloody difficult to get up in the morning with eventful nights like these!!!

Spooky Shit...

Did you know I’m a dream psychic? Unfortunately though only ever on a 24 hour basis, and only ever predicting very trivial events, rather than anything useful like knowing the lottery numbers in advance or preventing 9/11. For example:

At university I dreamt I was appointed Travel Editor of our student newspaper, and the next day I was.
A couple of months back I dreamt I bumped into mentally disturbed former colleague on Prague public transportation, and the next day I did - twice.
And most notably of all, on 22nd March 2010, I woke up and asked my other half if we’d seen on the news the previous evening that Jade Goody had died. He said no, but when we checked the news later that same morning – the poor dappy cow had only gone and carked it.

So if I dream you suddenly happen to snuff it one of these days, don’t worry – I promise not to tell you about it until at least 24 hours have passed… ;-)))

The Scariest Dream of All

WARNING: David do not read!!!!!!!!!!!!! Or if you do, please don’t take it too seriously! ;-))

Any of you blog followers (are there actually any???) who know me well will know that I am completely and utterly cynical towards the matrimonial state and truly despise all children, who I don’t even consider worthy of the status as “human being” until at least the age of 21.

So can someone please tell me the hell why I’ve recently been dreaming repeatedly of weddings (and yes, by that I do mean my own) and mothering children who I actually… do rather quite like – WTF?????? I suppose the wedding ones can be at least partially explained by my recent attendance of my step-brother’s big day, but the baby ones on the other hand are not only inexplicable, but certainly a most unwelcome intrusion into my waking hours!! That said, I did have one dream recently where rather than rearing human babies, I actually found my calling in opening a puppy and kitten farm instead, where I spent my working days just playing with cute baby Labradors and Persian Blues – far more up my street than changing shitty nappies and cleaning up sick, that’s for sure!!

Time to start watching some of good old Miss Jo “It’s Not Ass-ep-tikle” Frost, ‘Brat Camp’ and re-reading my favourite devil child literature ‘We Need to Talk About Kevin’ (highly recommended, btw) to remind myself on what am definitely not missing by actively choosing not to reproduce!!